[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1CT1TtGNu4?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
For a visitor not familiar with the cultures of Southwest Asia, this map is a lame short hand code for that trans-dimensional experience.

Southwest Asia is where the first time visitor, having cultural roots in Western Europe or North America, and now having both feet firmly on the ground of this unusual cultural landscape, finds, for personal consumption, placed on the table before him, a plate with four pounds of sweets that all are just too sweet…and then, from the vague mist of too much sweetness, the visitor may realize…the game is on.

The Southwest Asia background geopolitics establish the contemporary context for the large construction projects in the Arabian Peninsula region–the region in which the Empty Quarter and my landscape story, The 23 Club, take place.